Published as : Band Nr. 9, “Sammlung älterer und neuerer staatswissenschaftlicher Schriften des In- und Auslandes“. Herausgegeben von Dr. Lujo Brentano, Prof an der Universität München, und Dr. Emanuel Leser, Prof. an der Universität Heidelberg, Leipzig, Verlag Duncker & Humblot, 1896

Bibliographics: Daniel Bernoulli’s original tract in Latin Specimen Theoriae Novae de Mensura Sortis appeared in 1738 and is available in this collection as a community text - at: https://archive.org/details/SpecimenTheoriaeNovaeDeMensuraSortis [1]

In 1954 Louise Sommer (1889-1964), published the first English translation of Bernoulli’s text with the assistance of Karl Menger (1902-1985), Professor  of Mathematics, Illinois Institute of  Technology: Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk,Econometrica,Vol. 22 (Jan., 1954), pp. 23–36 (available online).

Finally Lutz and Peter Kruschwitz in 1996 provided a new German translation titled Entwurf einer neuen Theorie zur Bewertung von Lotterien, published in: Die Betriebswirtschaft, 56. Jg., Nr. 6/1996, S. 733-742.

The publication of this text – particularly the introduction written by Ludwig Fick in 1896 - fell into the period characterized by what is now called the “Methodenstreit” between the Austrian and Historic Schools in economics. Little is known about Ludwig Fick who worked at the Staatswirtschaftliche Seminar of Lujo Brentano at the University of Munich. In the context of Fick’s unexpected death (probably 1897, caused by appendicitis) Brentano reports (1908): “With tireless diligence Ludwig Fick has subsequently excerpted the writings of philosophers, lawyers, theologians and economists of two millennia in German libraries and the British Museum in consideration of their views about the value question.” The working papers of Fick are still stored at the Munich University Library.

These Fick-papers provided (in part) the historic fundament of the following noteworthy German publications in the context of economic value theory (Wertlehre):

Kaulla, Rudolf, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der modernen Werttheorien, Tübingen 1906

Brentano, Lujo, Die Entwicklung der Wertlehre, first printed in: Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch –philologischen und der historischen Klasse der K. B. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, Jahrgang 1908, II. Abhandlungen (3), published München 1909 - available as community text.

Weber, Max, Die Grenznutzlehre und das „psychophysische Grundgesetz“, first printed in: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 27. Bd., Heft 2, 1908, S. 546-558, later print in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tübingen, 1922 – available as community text.

Content: Aside from the annotated German translation of Daniel Bernoulli’s Latin texts of 1738 by the mathematician Alfred Pringsheim, which is very entertaining to read, it is Fick’s Introduction that provides a concise and easy to understand summary of the European discussions ranking around the economic concept of marginal utility theory up to this time. It introduces the contributions of William Stanley Jevons, Lèon Walras, Carl Menger, and Hermann Heinrich Gossen to a wider German readership. Understandably, the dominance and academic influence of the Historic School at that time had not contributed to the wide distribution of the economic thoughts outside of Germany. The dispute about value between Samuel Bailey (1791-1870) and (probably) James Mill (1773-1836) in the years 1825-6 is not touched by Fick.

[1] For more recent discussions of the Petersburg paradox pls see:

Ole Peters, Murray Gell-Mann, Evaluating gambles using dynamics, in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, February 2016 (v.2), online at -                                    https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4940236                                                                                                                 and                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Ole Peters, The ergodicity problem in economics. Nature Physics 15, 1216–1221 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41567-019-0732-0 , online at - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0732-0.pdf

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